Women are still sold, just take the awful mass kidnaping that has been on the news for an example. Sex slavery is a real thing, as a matter of fact, there are now more slaves in the world than there were at the height of 1800s. Women are still treated as objects of male fantasy. Women are fed adds representing the image of who every woman "should be." When women don't live up to this image they are ignored, while those who try to become what they see in magazines or on TV are called sluts by the same men who do the fantasizing.
Women are made to feel that if they do not have a career they are "only a mother," as if that was some small and unimportant identity. At the same time, women who do enter the work place are paid less than men doing the same work. Women are viewed as somehow less valuable.
Listen to music or the language boys and men often use and you will find that ladies have been reduced to hoes, sluts, bitches, and whores. Men abuse women sexually, physically, and emotionally and justify and joke about it. Men who refuse to take responsibility for their actions leave women to raise and provide for children on their own and then treat them as lesser beings for being in their situation. Men who stay with their women often act as if they are kings who make all the decisions and cannot be questioned for their actions.
It was not intended to be this way! God did not make men to behave like this, or women to be treated like this. Just take a look at what I mean.
Genesis 2 tells us that God placed man in a beautiful garden, he gave him every tree good for food, beautiful scenery, a source of life everlasting, and a purpose, but something wasn't right.
Everything God created He called good, but then he looked at Adam, alone in the garden and He said "It is not good..." God created man to have a relationship with him, he showered him with blessings, but He saw that for man to be without the woman was "not good."
He said, "I will make the companion he needs, one just right for him." This word translated companion or helper is not best translated this way. It is actually the same word used to describe God over and over in the Old Testament when He is called strong deliverer or savior. God said, man is in a terrible situation, I will make a savior to deliver him from loneliness. But God did not make her right away.
Now, God could have made woman in that moment, but He did not. God does all that He does for a reason. He wanted man to appreciate what he had, so he allowed Adam to come to understand his aloneness and desire deliverance. He brought all the animals before Adam, everything that crawled and everything that flew, but Adam did not find a companion who was right for him. No animal could play the role of savior and deliver Adam form his lonely state. When it says there was no one right for him, the term literally means to stand in front of. There was no one Adam could look at, face to face, eye to eye and share his experience with. No animal knew what it was to be Adam, when he looked into the eye of the animals and birds, he could see no mirror back into his own soul.
Only when Adam realized this did God act. He caused a deep sleep to come over Adam and He took a rib from Adam's and formed Eve. He did not use one of Adam's toes to form the woman. Had He done this it would suggest that the woman was below the man. He did not use part of Adam's skull to form her either. Had he done this it would suggest that the woman was above the man. No, God took a rib from his side. This was the only one who could stand in front of Adam, an equal, taken from his side.
When God brought her before Adam, he was amazed! In the moment of face-to-face, when he looked into the eyes of his equal, he gained understanding of who he was, he found his identity. He said I am man and she is woman, flesh of my flesh. He used a new word here, the word translated as man, up to this point was Adam, but now he recognizes himself as man because he sees himself and something not himself in the woman, the same, but different.
Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness... So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
The image of God was expressed in man and woman. A complete picture. In seeing this, Adam saw himself cast in a different light. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one. (Gen. 2:24). Because the man's identity is not in his heritage, not in his title, not in his inheritance, but in his wife. What a beautiful picture. Relationship according to God's design.
So what ever happened? Sin! The very next chapter tells of the fall and the curse. We know the story, but there is a part of the curse we seem to always forget, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
This was not the plan, this was the result of sin, the curse. This explains why it is so hard to leave the man who mistreats and underappreciates you. The woman's desire is no longer toward her God or toward herself, she no longer finds her identity there, her desire is towards the man, and she does not know who she is without him. This allows the man to rule. But there is hope which comes from the seed of woman!
In Christ all are one! Christ is the true savior of all! He delivers us from sin, from death, and from the curse! Your identity is not in any man, it is in your relationship with God.
The woman was made to complete the representation of God in mankind, to deliver the man from his loneliness, and to experience oneness with man and God. What is a woman's worth? God said that without her the crown of His creation was not good, but together they were very good. That is worthwhile!
Women, take pride in the place God has given you. See yourself for who you are. Understand your identity in light of who your God made you to be, not in light of the way you have been treated by anyone. You were made because man needs you, not because you need to put up with any man mistreating you.
Men, treat your women right. Be a man! Admit your need and treat women with respect remembering that she was made so that you could have an equal.
Things don't have to be so twisted, we can have the relationship God made us for if we are delivered by His Son and live as He guides us. Christ left everything for His bride and he promises her everything. Take a lesson from him.
